The Myanmar military junta was left red-faced when its cover-up of a deadly shooting of a senior Buddhist monk was exposed by another monk who was with the victim at the scene, in another grim reminder that the regime is totally untrustworthy.
Sayadaw Bhaddanta Munindabhivamsa , a retired member of the State Sangha Nayaka Committee, the highest Buddhist authority in Myanmar, was shot dead by junta troops on Wednesday near Tada-U Airport in Mandalay Region.
Junta media earlier said the abbot of Win Neinmitayon Monastery in Bago was killed in a land-mine ambush by People’s Defense Force (PDF) fighters, referring to anti-regime groups that have been fighting the junta since the 2021 coup. The regime has labeled PDFs as terrorist organizations.
Junta media said the vehicle transporting the monk was blown up as it drove into an area where PDF groups were using mines to ambush junta personnel. According to the junta media, the incident left the 78-year-old monk dead and injured another monk, Bhaddanta Gunikabhivamsa, the abbot of Kanthonhsint Buddhism Learning Center in Yangon’s Mingaladon Township, as well as driver U Kyaw Win.
However, the junta’s lie was exposed on Thursday in a video that went viral online in which the surviving monk recalls his ordeal to a gathering of Buddhist monks at the monastery where Sayadaw Bhaddanta Munindabhivamsa lay in state on Thursday in Bago.
Sayadaw Bhaddanta Gunikabhivamsa said junta soldiers in a truck fired around seven or eight shots at the car, and that he suffered injuries to his head caused by broken glass from the vehicle.
“I got out of the car and said, ‘Why are you so cruel to monks?’ They [the junta soldiers] replied that they had not known that monks were inside the car. They admitted that they wrongly shot at the vehicle thinking that it was the enemy’s, as the car’s windows were shut. Then, they asked us to give them our phones and told us not to call anyone,” the monk recalled.
In this video, Sayadaw Bhaddanta Gunikabhivamsa recalls his ordeal, in which he was injured in a shooting by junta troops.
To the junta’s embarrassment, the monk’s account was identical to a report on the incident presented by the chief of the Mandalay Region Religious Affairs Department to his director-general in Naypyitaw. In the report he says he learned from local authorities that “the monk was killed after those conducting a security patrol shot at his vehicle, which had driven away after being told to pull over.”
By “those conducting a security patrol”, the Mandalay Region Religious Affairs Department chief was referring to junta personnel. Otherwise, he would have used the term “so-called PDF terrorists”, as it is widely used by the regime in its report.
Moreover, his report makes no mention of any fighting near the scene, as claimed in the regime media reports, nor does it contain the term “PDF”.
Laypeople close to the monk told other media outlets that the vehicle carrying the Sayadaw was fired upon because it did not pull over.
After the killing of the venerable monk triggered outrage among the Buddhist community, junta media and pro-junta media began pointing the finger at PDFs.
The shooting happened after the two monks landed at Tada-U Airport on a flight from Yangon on Wednesday to attend a Shwekyin Nikaya Center meeting scheduled for Thursday in Mandalay.
Prominent monk Sitagu Sayadaw, who became the chief of the Shwe Kyin sect, one of Myanmar’s nine Buddhist monastic sects, thanks to his close ties with junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, has yet to comment on the incident.
